Firefox and bloated RAM usage
 

My Firefox v3.0.10 has started behaving strangely. It will load normally, using about 200k of RAM. Over about an hour, the RAM bloats to about 1.7G, and I have to shut it down and restart. Has anybody seen this?

Yes - and it's one of the reasons I'm thinking of dumping it.

My average use goes from about 24MB to over 650MB in about 2 hours. I use a lot of tabs, but I've only got a couple of extensions.

They'd better fix this or people are going to be switching to something else :(

Try - with Firefox closed - Start, Run: firefox -safe-mode

I have run FF 3.1b3 for a "long" time now and don't have that issue. I constantly have around 5-8 open FF windows with total of about 60-80 tabs open, and my memory is contantly around 700-800 MB.

FF 3.5 beta 4 has been out for awhile and I'll probably upgrade whenever one of my favorite add-ons get available for that release. Memory management is said to be even better in 3.5 over 3.1, which so far has been great.

I'm running 3.5 b4, so it is most certainly not better. In fact, as I type this, I have ONE window, and ONE tab, and the damn thing is using 740MB.

3.0.10, and I never see more than 200MB used. 3-6 tabs open most of the time, too, and a handful of add-ins.

Weird.

Is anyone with high memory usage using the Google toolbar? And those with low mem usage, perhaps not? The only 2 extensions I have are "smoothscroll" and the Google toolbar...

I too use FF 3.0.10 and have had the same instance of FF open since this afternoon. I have opened and closed scores of tabs and have not gone beyond 125 MB. I started watching the memory usage after I read this thread. I used to have problems with FF (earlier incarnations) hogging memory as time progressed after starting it. It would slow down, not just FF, but the PC itself. FlyerTalk was the culprit, as it did not hapepn if FT was not being used. Once, I installed NoScript, Flashblock, and ....... Plus, the problem went away. I found thos advice here on FT. It's a bit of nuisance as all scripts are turned off by default. When you vists a site, you have to train your FF to allow scripts, or flash for the sites you want to allow.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_m...usage_(Firefox)

Thanks for the link. You left the ")" out of the link. Great link.^

240mb here. It's been open about an hour. Google toolbar is installed.

Have had it open for about 24 hours, using 8-10 tabs, lots of opening/closing. 288K

Extensions: Aardvark, ......., ....... Filterset G Updater, BugMeNot, Colorful Tabs, Customize Google, Domain Lookup, Download Embedded Images, Fast Video Download, Greasemonkey, Navigational Sounds, Paste Quote, Session Manger, TinyURL Creator, WootWatcher, XMarks, Yapta, Logmein.

No Google ToolBar. I tried it once, and got the high mem usage after an hour.

I have 3.0.10 with ....... and colorfultabs and Google toolbar. 10 tabs open for over three hours and RAM usage is 139k.

I have:
.......
Back to Google
Blocksite
Fire gestures
Google Toolbar
GooglePreview
Greasemonkey
IE Tab
Image Zoom
PDF Downloader
Split Browser

I am suspicious about the Mafia Wars script on Facebook. I run FF, and my wife runs IE on the same computer so we don't have to log in an ou of Yahoo and FB. She does not have Google toolbar, but the IE RAM swells as well.

Wow, I don't think I've had a web browswer that loads with anything less than a couple of Megabytes for close to a decade, now. Man, those were the days :D

(K/k is 3-4 orders of magnitude off from M. You're welcome.)